Tokyo Olympics —

Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Local hiking expert says your beach days ain’t over yet! Arcadia Wildlife Management Area (Credit: Cliff Vanover, Great Swamp Press) Cliff Vanover has long been interested in the natural world. For decades, he has enjoyed hiking in and near Rhode Island, especially where he can observe evidence of glacial geology. As the proprietor of Great Swamp Press, based in southern RI, he writes and publishes maps and guides for walking and biking that are regarded as the definitive products of their kind for the areas covered. Despite the popularity of smart device apps, he said, often people want a hand-curated paper map. One of his most popular, he said, is for the trails and footpaths of the Arcadia Wildlife Management Area. “My motivation to make the map was for myself so I would know where I was going. My first map was the Arcadia.” For traditional woodland hiking, he recommends Arcadia in central RI or Pachaug in nearby Connecticut, for which he also publishes a guide. In summer before the weather cools, however, he said he avoids the woods due to bees and ticks, preferring coastal and beach hikes. Map of beach walk from Green Hill to East Matunuck in South Kingstown, RI. (Credit: Cliff Vanover, Great Swamp Press) Vanover made a custom map for Motif readers for a short 4- to 5-mile hike in South Kingstown. “This is fun and takes a little carpooling,” he said. “This is at least a two-person hike,” so you first station one car at East Matunuck where the walk ends and drive another car to Green Hill Beach where the walk begins. “You start walking east on the beach,” he said. “Then you get onto Moonstone Beach, which is spectacular, but they want you to stay as close to the water as possible because by then the [endangered] plovers are gone but you really should not explore the coastal ponds there, you should just stay on the beach. And then you go to South Kingstown Town Beach and you have to get out there, you get onto the roads, and you go through Matunuck and then you end up at at East Matunuck State Beach. And there you are.” Cliff Walk and Bellevue Avenue (Credit: Cliff Vanover, Great Swamp Press) He has several different publications for Aquidneck Island, including for Cliff Walk and Bellevue Avenue, for Newport Harbor Walk, for The Point: Map and Guide to Colonial and Early American Houses, and for Biking Aquidneck Island and Guide to Coastal Access. “As for Newport, if they wanted to do the Cliff Walk as a loop hike, they can start on Memorial Boulevard and Bellevue Ave, walk to the east toward First Beach and then get onto the trail, walk south and walk to the end down at Bailey’s Beach, and then walk back on Spring Street or Bellevue back to their car. That’s an eight-mile hike. And you can’t beat that for ocean landscapes.” Other publications are for Carolina and Burlingame and for Bicycling Roads in South County. At the high end of difficulty, Vanover cited the “North-South Trail that goes from the Blue Shutters Beach in Charlestown to the Massachusetts border at buck Hill. It’s 75 miles. It’s quite a trail. But you can’t camp on it, there’s no place, so really pretty much have to do it in pieces.” His guide for that, unfortunately, is out of print although he is working on a forthcoming second edition. Vanover recommended MeetUp.com for anyone interested in exploring RI with a group, especially the Rhode Island Hiking Club and the Narragansett Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club. While the Hiking Club describes itself as offering “rather challenging hikes often through rough terrain,” their activities include “a variety of hikes from the beginner to the more experienced” and are rated on a scale of difficulty. Vanover said, “They have hikes for people who are getting into it or back into hiking,” usually “hikes more in the range of 5 to 8 miles.” He specifically noted their Wolf Hill Trail Hikes, which they describe as “Level 2 Moderate Difficulty” running “4 miles more or less” lasting “about two hours.” Great Swamp Press publications are available for mail order directly on the web at GreatSwampPress.com and are stocked by retailers including the Map Center in Pawtucket, Ure Outfitters in Hope Valley, and REI in Cranston. Vanover recommends telephoning retailers in advance to confirm the guide wanted is in stock. On the Ball and Off the Wall: Tokyo Olympics — Down and Dirty (and Deadly?) This column is for non-sports fans who would like some enlightenment and hopefully humor beyond being sports fanatics. Anybody want to buy 160,000 condoms, cheap? If so, contact the International Olympics Committee in Tokyo, where they plan to hand out that stockpile of rubbers to the 11,000 athletes who will be competing in these audience-free events because they would probably like to get them off their hands ASAP. (That sound you hear is Olympic Games founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin spinning in his grave like an industrial lathe.) Since 1988 at the Games in Seoul, the IOC has been handing out condoms to Olympic athletes by the pantload. This was in recognition of the fact that when you put thousands of athletes, most in the prime of their young lives and fitter than any fiddle you’ll ever hear, into the confines of the Olympic Village sites, primal urges are going to hit them like a tsunami. How profoundly does this intensity, desire and hot blood affect these sports people? Former U.S. Women’s National Team soccer goaltender and two-time Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo (great name, eh?) told the New York Post, “There’s a lot of sex going on. I’ve seen people having sex right out in the open. On the grass, between the buildings, people are getting down and dirty.” Never mind the number who have some sense of discretion, dignity and couth who are going at it behind closed doors in their Village apartments.And like the sporting events, we are sure performance does indeed matter. But here’s the hummer in Tokyo. The IOC plans to hand out the condoms after the Games end so there’s no appearance of encouraging fraternizing during a pandemic. The IOC further explains that this show of STD stifling and pregnancy prevention largesse will be used by the athletes to spread awareness of HIV and AIDS when they return home. Oh, right. This kind of idiocy is just part of the twisted thinking that is surrounding the bedeviled Tokyo Games. While imagining another victory via the Trojans, the IOC is showing how desperate it is to avoid having a real discussion about the coronavirus. The virus is spiking in Japan right now, and what better way to show fear of a mass outbreak than to slap together athletes side-by-each in their residences and on their field, court, pool or whatever then push ahead as though the reality of the virus is nonexistent. Right now only 22% of the Japanese public support their holding of the Games (versus 52% of Americans surveyed). Scaredy cats. To suggest that daily COVID tests of the athletes will absolutely, positively guarantee no one will come down with the disease is nonsense. If five New York Yankees can test positive for it (as they did recently) despite all of America’s National Pastime’s protective measures, please don’t suggest the shot putters from Poland or table tennis players from China are immune once they hit the ground in Tokyo. So while the IOC stubbornly soldiers on, blind to a frightening disease but eyes wide open as to whose what is where when and how in the Olympic Villages, “deadly” becomes added to that down and dirty recipe for how the Games should play out. But it is much more fun to find humor in the sexual side than COVID-19. If I were smarter, I would have checked the stocks of the top producers of condoms everywhere and anywhere once the athletes and public found out about the post facto distribution of condoms. Surely no problem for the athletes to sneak these into their luggage underneath their all-purpose, logo-shouting track suits. One remembers growing up in an American sports culture where, once you were old enough, you were told you should absolutely never, ever have sex the night before a game, lest you end up the next day a shivering piece of worthless, talentless crap who betrayed your teammates for a quickie. They don’t keep statistics for it, but since 1988, it would have been fun to ask all the Olympic medalists whether or not they had gotten some on the eve of their finals event. If they had an over/under bet on that stat, I’ll take the “over” every day of the week. One hundred and sixty thousand condoms can’t be wrong. On the Ball and Off the Wall: The bar exam My guess is sports bars took it in the teeth with the COVID restrictions, but luckily most of the restraints on businesses were softened at a good time for sports bars. The NHL and NBA were just entering their postseason playoffs, the baseball season was getting rolling and soccer’s Euro championship was kicking off. And international soccer is starting to take a foothold in the TV market, although you have to search out which places are airing the matches.

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